GOR'2012 Poster Presentation

I'm going to be presenting a poster at the General Online Research (GOR'2012) conference in Mannheim, Germany.

The poster is titled “Thinking, Planning & Operationalizing Empirical Mixed Methods Research Design” and it draws upon my Ph.D. dissertation research on member participation in virtual communities.

The rationale for communicating the methodological aspects of my dissertation is primarily to explicate the practice of mixed methods research design and to highlight the various stages comprising an empirical research project. Toward this, the poster content is delineated through four junctures of a mixed methods project – designated as the four Ps: Purpose, Plan, Process & Product.

Since the poster is based on a real-world research project, it provides examples of decisions, options, tools and techniques that were used through the various stages of my research. I’m hoping that the poster will provide some functional suggestions to those who are interested in mixed methods research. As a doctoral student who was just getting started with mixed methods research, I often found myself perplexed about issues of coming up with compelling research design, operational data collection mechanisms, credible & effective analysis techniques, and logical integration between qualitative & quantitative methods. In all likelihood, there may be other researchers with similar questions and I’m hoping that the poster will provide useful insights and perhaps some fodder for aspiring mixed methods researchers.

• The official abstract of the poster is available here: http://bit.ly/yAyC5K
• The poster can be found here: http://bit.ly/wocZcN (PDF – 2.5 MB)

If you saw the poster at the conference or here, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts or getting some feedback. Feel free to comment below or email me or connect with me on twitter.

Free Google Mobile Phone Services

I recently offered a graduate seminar course on Mobile Commerce at the University of Ottawa, and it was pretty surprising to see how many mobile end-users still don’t use third party applications and services that exist outside the realm of their service provider’s portfolio. This end-user behavior is highly representative of the Canadian mobile services landscape where our industry structure is highly vertical and the service structure is highly integrated. In Canada, the operators exercise a lot of control over the entire mobile value chain. Companies like Rogers, Telus, and Bell provide services including voice, messaging, internet, and email functions as prepackaged bundles. The customers have little choice in selecting the specific modules that they might be more interested in. Furthermore, the mobile portals on handhelds are usually preconfigured to link to the service provider’s solutions, and do not offer other choices – even free service choices. Many students in my class hadn’t even heard of the following google services that are offered for free (barring the operator’s data transmission charages):


Google 411 (1-800-GOOG-411) Website Link

Google’s voice local search service for local businesses uses speech recognition technology to allow users to query for and connect to businesses. Users can search for businesses by name or category (which is a definite plus in comparison with the traditional 411 service offered by operators). The service then generates a list of businesses that match the user’s query, and allows the users to select an entry from the list. Following the selection, the user can either directly get connected to the business or ask for a text message to be sent with the relevant business details. For users with internet access and google maps, the service also accepts the “map it” voice command to show a map of the business neighborhood.

So not only is the service free to use, but it has advanced features not available through the directory assistance service offered by many operators. For Canadian users, until we get something like TellMe.com, this is the next best thing – store 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) in your contact list and start using it !



Google SMS (46645) Website Link

This is Google’s fast information response service (SMS number 46645), and it lets users send quick queries to Google via SMS and get back responses. Rather than using your data quota in accessing different search engines or websites, the service allows users to quickly get back the information they’re looking for. The service supports specific types of queries such as weather reports, movies, stock quotes, directions, and local businesses by name or category. See this page for examples of queries. To get started, you can try some queries on the online emulator provided here and get familiar with the results. Again, it's not just a free service, but something that’s much easier to use in comparison to its alternatives (e.g. browsing the internet on your handheld to get the information) – store 46645 in your contact list and start using it for SMS queries.

Do you know of any other useful free mobile phone services? If so, leave your comment below, or send me a note.

The Informatician - Blog Overview

Key Definitions:

Informatician: someone who practices informatics

Informatics: the art, science and human dimensions of information technology ; the interdisciplinary study of the design, application, use and impact of information technology



Subject Matter of the Blog:

My intention in starting this blog is to discuss and learn about current and upcoming information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their applications for public end-users as well as organizations.

By virtue of my own professional and academic pursuits, I am particularly interested in the discussing challenges and opportunities in the areas of Virtual Communities; Web Engineering ; Web 2.0 Technologies; Web Services; Social Media; Information Security; and Electronic Human Resources Management.

Orientation of the Blog Writer:

My philosophy as an informatician is fundamentally based on my conviction that the design and deployment of technologies is more than just a technical pursuit, and as informaticians, we strive to bring attention to the intricate relationship between technologies and their social and organizational context of use in real-world settings.

My own predilection as an informatician is at the intersection of management and sociology, and most of my work as an academic and an industry consultant has been in the areas of social informatics and business informatics.

Below is a visual depiction of how I think about informatics. Please note that this is purely my own viewpoint - you might have an different position on the same subject.

click to enlarge